By Peter Kaminski in bpd — Jun 15, 2022

Plex: June 2022, week 3

News and views from around the Plex.

Flight – Peter Kaminski

The Biweekly Plex Dispatch is an inter-community newspaper published by Collective Sense Commons on first and third Wednesdays of each month. Price per issue: 1 USD, or your choice of amount (even zero).

In This Issue

ReSource; Patchwork Urban Farms
Fuzzy Linking
The Cloud (Central Texas)
Attention, Multitasking, and Neural Addiction in the Internet Age
Head Shots
On The Right Track
Life Path Collage
Map Weavers Update
plex in effect!

0:00

charles blass

ReSource; Patchwork Urban Farms

by Kevin Jones

We are looking to integrate our venture philanthropy dollars on our multidonor marketplace with that of a barter-on-the-blockchain, mutual credit startup called ReSource. They are on the Celo chain. We are also working with Patchwork Urban Farms, a local producer, consumer and worker coop, that is also integrating with ReSource, to see what we might do together.

Fuzzy Linking

by Bill Anderson

Massive Wiki Builder v1.7.1 was released with support for “fuzzy linking” (linking to a page in the wiki regardless of folder, as wiki links work in Obsidian and other Markdown wiki clients) and a sidebar on the wiki web pages.

Next up on the development list is provision of search capability for websites built by Massive Wiki Builder.

The Cloud (Central Texas)

by Bill Anderson

Central Texas on the evening of 11 June 2002 facing Southeast – Bill Anderson

Attention, Multitasking, and Neural Addiction in the Internet Age

by Ken Homer

The ubiquity of always on, always-on-you, always connected technology in the form of smart phones and mobile devices has radically transformed the landscape of human interaction, and of the human mind and body as well. Tech companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars studying the best way to capture someone’s attention when they are facing a screen. They’ve learned that playing a sound while flashing something shiny into the upper right visual field is stunningly effective in attracting our attention. But it comes with a high cognitive price tag attached.

According to Daniel J. Levitin, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, as soon as we see that someone has sent us a text or email, most of us drop whatever we are doing and respond to the interruption. People think that having their browser, Slack, Facebook, Twitter, email and instant messaging programs all running behind whatever other work application they have open allows them to multitask, and thus be more productive. The research is showing that the reality is just the opposite: multitasking fragments and reduces our attention span and it does so in harmful and possibly irreversible ways. Multitasking:

Can cause new information to be processed by the wrong part of the brain.
Can lower our intelligence by as much as ten IQ points.
Because it requires decision making, multitasking tires us out faster than monotasking.
Increases the production of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline which reduce our ability to access the executive functions that we need for demanding mental tasks.

Most insidiously, it activates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop that rewards the brain for losing focus. And let’s not forget that multitasking produces work of inferior quality compared what would be achieved if we stayed focused on a single task from start to finish. If it’s so bad for us, why do we do it?

This short excerpt from Levitin’s book posted in The Guardian gives us a clue:

Each time we dispatch an email in one way or another, we feel a sense of accomplishment, and our brain gets a dollop of reward hormones telling us we accomplished something. Each time we check a Twitter feed or Facebook update, we encounter something novel and feel more connected socially (in a kind of weird, impersonal cyber way) and get another dollop of reward hormones. But remember, it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of the brain driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centres in the prefrontal cortex. Make no mistake: email-, Facebook- and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.

Want to get more done in less time?

Turn on the do not disturb feature on your phone and computer. Focus on one task at a time and close it up before moving to your next item or project. Set a timer for 90 minutes and then take a five minute break to walk around and stretch. I am the first to admit that this is hard to do and I am not always successful. However, I have learned that when I really need to focus and get something done, these simple steps are tremendously helpful.

Headshots

by Ken Homer

Buddha head, Montreal mailbox, The Lion in Winter – Ken Homer

On The Right Track

by Jordan Sukut

Hello from the Lionsberg | Meta Project teams!

We are juggling a busy couple weeks and making some great progress.

If you are interested in joining our Wednesday calls, the schedule is as follows:

12:20 PT – Coffee and Community
12:30 PT – Silent Prayer and Meditation
12:35 PT – Navigation Meeting
2:00 PT – Retro and Next Steps
2:30 PT – Close

Over the last couple weeks we rolled our sleeves up and made tremendous progress growing in our shared understanding and articulation of 1) structure 2) patterns of decentralization and federation, and 3) inviting everyone to engage with at least one emergent [Group / Sovereign]. We had a great call pushing this into minimum viable form on 6/15, and we are on the right track!

This week we assigned teams to work over the next 2-3 weeks to advance our remaining objectives for this cycle:

A minimum viable working declaration or constitution
A minimum viable Integrated Delivery System
Resourcing the critical path

The most difficult of those three will be resourcing. If you see value in what is emerging and would like to help, please reach out to Jordan at J@Lionsberg.org.

As we get through these next few steps, we will be in a fantastic position heading into Q3. Thank you so much to everyone who is participating and contributing.

With Love, In Community,
~ the Lionsberg | Meta Project community / team of teams

Life Path Collage

by Judith Benham

Map Weavers Update

(this update was inadvertently left out of the initial publication of this issue, it will be added in soon. check back for updates tomorrow!)

plex in effect!

by charles blass

the tings, tings aplenty…

main event: last week, the platform dao gitcoin grant update went live

https://gitcoin.co/grants/3116/the-platform

(note, july 7 you’re invited to hear our pitch at unfound cooperative accelerator — audience gets to vote 👀 )

this week, kernel showcase for kb6 (the empty block) alumni cohort took place (20220614)

[Alumni Showcase 2.0] Breakout Room 1: Service Protocols / NFTs & DAOs

[Alumni Showcase 2.0] Breakout Room 2: DeFi & DAOs / Infra & GameFi

(details in thread:)

https://twitter.com/kernel0x/status/1536372026755141632

locally here in zürich there’s been some extra activity around NFTs. on the weekend i had a chance to meet some jetsetting friends of friends, now my friends, hear and have some generative discussions around the corner at the kunsthaus
https://www.nftartday.com/

also last month i visited the popup gallery put together by zurich-based artynft magazine
https://artynft.io/nft-pop-up-gallery-zurich/

fundamentally despite rampant noise and crap i am super excited by what’s evolving in the nft space and our team at the platform is encouraged to move forward and build cutting edge open source web3 tooling in the bear market without so much distraction.

hints of what else is transpiring behind the scenes:

community gardening patterning
trust commons based decisionmaking
purpose driven smart contracts
impactdao knowledge graphing

ok i didn’t want this to be so long however i must add something here about the indefatigable peter kaminski and the plex. maybe suffice to say what i said on twitter, plus i invited pete to express the plex process flow in terms of patterns for spreading between communities, such as for the impactdao space, prompted by the open request of kevin owocki of gitcoin. there is definitely a need for this sort of community driven beat reporting everywhere, in every community, though most have no awareness or practice yet. this is so far beyond “newsletter”. the effects for me since its inception have already been profound. and the process is impressive, though not as impressive as pete’s generosity, kindness, patience, foresight, and willingness to go the distance. thank you again peter k!!! when you get around to it pls ask your clone to observe you and thoroughly document the plex process. rinse and repeat 🙌🏼

[Aw, shucks. Thank you, Charles! The clone has promised to document Plex patterns–I'm looking forward to it! 🙂 - PK]

https://twitter.com/lovevolv/status/1532358866847121408

https://twitter.com/lovevolv/status/1534172631448141824